


Here I Stand And Here I'll Stay

by killingmonsterswritingthings



Category: Olympics RPF, Snowboarding RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Coming Out, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1292332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killingmonsterswritingthings/pseuds/killingmonsterswritingthings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark wants to come out, but doesn't really know how he's supposed to do it. Good thing he has loyal friends with smart ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here I Stand And Here I'll Stay

In some ways, Mark didn't really need to come out. He didn't exactly make a secret out of his sexuality, so probably half the snowboarding scene knew. He knew that he had some kind of privilege in this.

But he also knew that sometimes omitting information in an interview or not posting an Instagram picture hurt. It hurt, even if he didn't have a boyfriend right now and it wasn't really anybody's business anyway.

And he knew that maybe it might help one or two of those lonely kids out there, and if it made him less lonely in the process, why should he not do it?

He did have another little issue though. How the fuck should he do it? Sure, he could just call a press conference but that would probably have him stutter incoherently if he didn't read directly from a paper, so he decided against it.

So, in an act of desperation, he called Staale.

“Maaark,” Staale answered after two rings.

“Are you drunk?”

“No, just hyped up. Here, let me put you on speaker, Sage's here, too.”

“Mark, what's up?!” Sage's voice came from the phone and Mark had to laugh and hold it away from his ear a little.

“Hi Sage,” Mark grinned. “Guys, I'm in a little bit of a pickle.” Might as well just ask them both what they thought.

“We can't have that. What's the problem?”

“Okay, so, here's the thing. I wanna come out to... the general public, because, as you guys should probably know, I'm gay. But I don't really know how, so... any ideas?”

“First of all, that's really cool,” Staale said, with Sage making agreeing noises in the background. “And uhh... I don't really know, man.”

“You could upload a picture of you kissing a guy,” Sage supplied.

Mark thought about it for a second. “Sounds okay, but who?”

“How about us?” Staale asked with a definite smirk in his voice.

“How the fuck am I supposed to do that, I don't even know where you two are right now!” Mark rolled his eyes.

“Photoshop?” Sage asked.

“That's ridiculous.”

“No, man, really. I mean, not the photoshop, but the picture. We're in Colorado right now. Are you at home?” Staale asked. “I'm pretty sure we could get a flight up there within the next few days. Hang out, take pictures, laugh at the reactions together.”

Mark was extremely confused. This entire conversation was moving a little too fast for him. “Hold up, you'd really do that?”

“Sure, why not?” Sage again.

“You're insane.”

“You're the one who wants to come out, buddy, we just want to help."

Okay, that was true but Mark hadn't expected them to latch onto the idea with this kind of enthusiasm and dedication. He had just wanted to find a way to say “I'm gay” for the media in an appropriate way. But hey, this sounded like a fun idea. Maybe not a good one, but when had they ever cared about that, anyway.

  


 

He picked them up from the airport three days later.

In hindsight it probably would have been easier if he had just flown down to Colorado, but Sage had never been in Regina and Staale had been excited about coming back, too, so he didn't feel too guilty.

They got home to Craig lounging in front of the TV and – upon the sounds of them entering the house – craning his neck around to greet them with a big smile. “Hey! What are you doing here?”

“I told you they were coming,” Mark said, rolling his eyes.

“We're here to help Mark come out,” Sage added and Mark almost facepalmed.

Craig pouted. “What? Why didn't you tell me?! I could have helped you.”

“Really, your ideas would have probably landed us in jail.” He couldn't even imagine with what kinds of crazy stuff Craig would have come up with. He was amazing, but there was definitely a reason Mark hadn't asked his brother for help.

“Fine, whatever. I'll leave you three to whatever you're gonna... do.”

“Shut up,” Mark mumbled, walking past Craig, the other two in tow. Really, the nerve.

  


Taking the picture didn't really go as planned. It wasn't actually the taking that posed problems as there were a lot of giggles and just a few issues with angles. No, much worse were the reactions.

The comments basically just read as variations of

“Cute”

“askljrkldfnmfk”

“you lose another bet?”

Mark looked up from his phone with an annoyed frown. “That's not really the effect I wanted.”

Staale took the phone from him and scrolled through the comments, laughing and showing some of them to Sage. “Well, that's what happens when you post a picture with the caption “Deal with it.” That doesn't really explain anything.”

“But that's the point. I don't want to have to explain.”

“Well, you either buckle up and write a speech or we could record a sextape but I don't think even Craig would approve of that,” Sage grinned.

“You're horrible and I hate you,” Mark sighed.

“You could make a video, you know,” Staale said. “You're bound to have to explain because you derive from the 'norm',” he made exaggerated air quotes and poked out his tongue for good measure, “so there's gonna be questions.”

“I don't even have a real reason to make a video though,” Mark complained, flopping around on his bed unhappily. This whole coming out thing was even harder than he had thought.

“You don't need a reason,” Sage said gently. “Or, well, you do have one, don't you? You were the one who wanted to come out. That should be enough.”

Mark huffed and turned around, staring at the ceiling. “You know what's funny?” he asked after a moment. “A while back I saw someone call me the Tom Daley of 2014 online.”

Sage cracked up. “Oh my god, are you _serious_?”

“Yeah, I laughed so hard I almost cried. I mean, it's not entirely untrue but the person probably didn't even know what they were saying.”

“Tom's like... bisexual though, isn't he?” Staale asked.

“Did he ever specify that?” Mark shrugged. “I don't know, but yeah, probably. I'm not though.”

“Oh, we know that,” Sage said and Mark tried to kick him in the shin but only barely grazed him with his toes.

“Really though, what am I gonna do?”

“Just make a video,” Staale repeated. “We'll be right here, okay? It'll be fine.”

“You don't even have to make it really long. Just come out and say it directly and be done with it,” Sage added.

Mark groaned. “I doubt that it'll be the end of it. There's probably gonna be a dozen people who are going to want to kill me for publicity reasons and a hundred others who will want to interview me. But you know what? I don't care.” With new energy he got up to search for his camera in the mess that he called his room. “Let's do this.”

Maybe he spent a little more time than necessary setting it up in the end, but nobody would ever know. Except Sage and Staale of course. But they were understanding. Mostly. Okay, Sage ended up making Mark sit down back on the bed forcibly.

“Come on now, just be yourself.”

“Fine, fine. Just press record,” Mark said. He was gonna do this. He could do it and he was not gonna back out now because this was important. Not only for him – even though it was, definitely – but also for a lot of other people who were out there.

Staale pressed the button. “Alright, go,” he said.

Mark stared at his knees for a moment. Then he raised his head and waved awkwardly at the camera. “Hi,” he said. “Uhh, you've probably seen the picture I posted on Instagram. If you haven't, it is one of me kissing the two guys who are currently sitting behind the camera there, laughing at me.”

“Hi,” Sage said.

“We aren't laughing,” Staale mumbled and Mark had to grin.

“Either way, I think most of you believe that photo was a joke. And I mean, to an extent it kind of was, because I'm not in a relationship with either Staale or Sage. But... I like guys. I like men. I'm gay.”

“Hell yeah,” Sage crowed, causing Mark to roll his eyes.

“Shut up, Sage! Can't even make a serious video here. Good thing Craig isn't in the room...”

Which was of course the exact moment Craig chose to walk past Mark's room and stick his head through the door. “Hey, I heard that!” Thankfully he vanished as suddenly as he had come but Mark still raked a hand through his hair and sighed.

“This is a mess,” he complained.

“We can just cut that part out,” Staale said. “You can do whatever you want with it, okay?”

Mark nodded and then searched for a way to pick up where he left off. “Now... I've liked guys my entire life. I tried dating girls, thinking that maybe it would go away or that I was bisexual or whatever. Pretend I was _normal_ . But you know what? That was _bullshit_!”

Sage gave him a thumbs up from behind the camera and Mark smiled back. “I am normal. I just happen to like dudes instead of girls. I struggled with it for a while but I came to terms with it, but I know not the whole world is like that. And I felt that I was lying whenever I ignored a question about girlfriends or whatever. I want to be honest.”

He scratched his cheek and shrugged. “I just wanna be myself. I just wanna snowboard and... if I ever meet someone I really want to be with, I want to be able to be open about it. And we're an open community. I can count on my friends to accept me, because they already have.” At that, Staale and Sage exchanged a look and then moved at the same time to sit next to Mark on the bed. Mark felt like his face had to split in half with the grin. “But I want _everyone_ to know. I want to... open this door, kind of, and just... Fuck all this bullshit, okay? I can be whatever I want, _you_ can be whatever you want and nobody can tell us to shut up about it because this... this is important.”

He took a deep breath, then he looked at the other two. “I think I'm done,” he said. Staale smiled and put his arm around him while Sage got up to switch off the camera.

“There you go,” Staale said. “Now we only need to edit and upload it. Easy as that.”

“I think,” Mark mumbled. “I just wanna leave it like that. No cuts. Like, who cares about Craig interrupting? Just makes it more real, you know. Talking about honesty and all that.”

Sage laughed. “Good thinking.”

So uploading the video was really all they had to do. And they did – after Mark found the strength to get up from the bed again. Youtube was moving agonizingly slow – as usual – but Sage and Staale distracted him by telling a story about how there had been an annoying woman with the worst German accent they had ever heard.

Before Mark even realised that any time had gone by, the video was up and he started freaking out about tweeting it. Because what the fuck was he supposed to write?

Finally he just went with “I've got something to tell you” and included the link, before first Sage and then Staale kidnapped his Laptop to tweet the video themselves. Which was nice. A little, at least.

“Hey, you're done with it now,” Staale said, putting the Laptop aside and ruffled his hair. “You can let it go.”

“Let it gooo,” Sage sang and Mark tried to hit him half-heartedly.

“Shut up,” he mumbled. “You really can't sing.”

“How rude,” Sage said with fake-hurt. “I believe my singing voice is the best thing I've ever heard.”

“I don't know which joke to make first...,” Staale said and even Sage had to laugh at that.

“No, but really. It's done now,” Sage said. “You can relax. It's out there and it doesn't really matter what people think about it, right? Because you got what you wanted and you don't have to... hide anymore now. Not that you ever really had to hide, but... you know.”

“Yeah,” Mark nodded. “I don't even really care what they say. Because I can keep on going out and hitting the slopes and being myself and it doesn't matter. But maybe I can make a difference now. In snowboarding and outside of it.”

“That's the spirit.”

“So, what do we do now?” Staale asked.

Mark was already anticipating the joke, but that didn't make it anymore horrible. “We could build a snowman,” Sage suggested and Mark elbowed him.

“I was thinking like... food and a nap.”

Staale yawned, proving Mark's point. “Sounds more likely.”

“If only people knew how boring you two actually are,” Sage sighed.

“Record it and make a video out of it.”

 

And if Mark snuck back to his Laptop later, when the other two were still asleep, to check out the feedback he was getting, then that was between him and the Internet.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Because really, how could I not? The post they talk about was actually something I saw on Tumblr. I don't remember who said it, but it was highly amusing.
> 
> Title is a quote from Let It Go. Obviously.
> 
> Thanks for the beta work and encouragement and general awesomeness go to Sammy, as usual.


End file.
